Your Right to Know

The city’s Downtown Commission updated its rules yesterday to prohibit adult entertainment clubs
and stores. But the man who proposed a Downtown strip club in April isn’t giving up just yet.

The new rules also ban businesses that were unlikely candidates for Downtown anyway, including
amusement parks, animal-hide processing facilities, slaughterhouses and salvage yards.

They also require certificates of appropriateness — specific approval from the Downtown
Commission — for animal kennels, helipads and portable buildings. Grant Medical Center, the only
hospital Downtown, has a helipad.

The changes go to the city’s Development Commission on Thursday, then to city council.

Marc Conte, deputy director of the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District and a board
member of the Downtown Residents Association of Columbus, said he supports the changes. He said as
Downtown grows as a residential neighborhood — it now has about 6,200 residents — it’s clear that
some businesses don’t fit.

The Downtown residents group came out against the proposed strip club at the site of a former
gay bar at 205 N. 5th St., just north of Spring Street.

The commission said in April that it didn’t have the authority to consider the proposal because
city code allows new adult businesses only in areas zoned for manufacturing, and Downtown was never
included as part of that. The Downtown District code neither prohibited nor allowed adult
entertainment.

At the time, one of the strip club’s principals, Charles Fischer, said he submitted his
paperwork for a certificate of appropriateness to the city before any code changes were
finalized.

He said yesterday that his proposal isn’t dead, although he acknowledged he doesn’t want to
throw money at something that’s not going to work. “The lawyers are looking into it.”

The changes also eliminate specific code sections for Downtown subdistricts such as the
riverfront, Warehouse District and Pen West, now know as the Arena District.

Those specified limits on height and street setbacks when the Downtown District’s code was
approved in 1997.

The 20-story, $50 million Condominiums at North Bank Park technically violate the five-story
limit set in the Pen West code, said city planning administrator Vince Papsidero. However, the
Downtown Commission approved the height because it clearly saw the project’s value to Downtown, he
said.

“The code had certain intentions that are less relevant to the way Downtown has evolved,”
Papsidero said. Flexible guidelines “are a far better way to conduct business.”